Saturday

When groundbreaking composer and Jewish refugee Arnold Schoenberg met MGM film producer Irving Thalberg in Hollywood, he turned down an offer to write the score for the blockbuster “The Good Earth.”

That decision is the inspiration for the new opera “Schoenberg in Hollywood” by avant-garde composer Tod Machover, commissioned by the Boston Lyric Opera. Machover, known for his use of new technologies to expand music, was moved by Schoenberg’s commitment to maintain his artistic integrity amidst the opportunities in America in the 1930s.

“I think he’s one of the greatest composers who ever lived,” said Machover, professor of Music and Media and director of the Opera of the Future Group at MIT’s Media Lab. “He stuck to what really mattered to him. It was a complicated life, but it centered around the idea that each of us needs to do something that reaches out to others.”

In “Schoenberg in Hollywood,” which runs Nov. 14-18 at the Paramount Center, Schoenberg struggles with how to reconcile traditional mass entertainment and a radical vision. It is summed up in the libretto line: “I could play to a million people. And yet…who am I?” To answer that, he looks backward and takes a journey through his past.

Raised in a religiously observant Jewish family in Vienna, Schoenberg converted to Lutheranism and then converted back to Judaism, fleeing Germany and then Paris when the Nazis came to power to arrive in the United States in 1934. Earlier, the Nazis had banned his music because he was Jewish and wrote challenging music. In Los Angeles, he was a professor at UCLA and heavily influenced John Cage and other innovative composers.

“It was a turbulent life and that’s reflected in the opera,” Machover said. “My goal is to sweep people along so they care about the characters and enjoy what they’re hearing. It’s meant to be fun and moving and quite an experience that works as music and theater.”

When BLO artistic director Esther Nelson first spoke with Machover about his work, she initially was puzzled about his interest to write an opera about another composer. To tell the story, Machover and librettist Simon Robson based it on a scenario by the late Braham Murray. In the opera, Schoenberg examines his artistic and personal life by making a movie about it. It culminates in a revelation he shares with his students and Thalberg.

“There was something about the way he described his inspiration that was infectious,” said Nelson, who previously worked with Machover on his opera “Resurrection.” “I realized it’s not a story about Schoenberg per se. It’s about what happens if your environment strips you of all opportunity for no reason other than you’re your ethnic or religious background or because you’re creating work that is objectionable to many. It’s about an artist’s journey to create in adversity and forge ahead with his vision.”

Machover, a 2012 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music, said it’s challenging for a composer to write an opera about another composer.

“I wanted to make sure the composition wasn’t a pastiche of Schoenberg, but I also wanted people to hear some of Schoenberg in this so they would give him another chance and want to follow up on things they heard,” he said.

Schoenberg did some of his most innovative work following his service in World War I, when many similarly groundbreaking artists, such as Picasso and James Joyce, felt that European civilization had been destroyed. He created the 12-tone system “to show how all these (non-traditional) sounds relate to each other, a sort of a tool kit for him to keep his music structured,” Machover said.

“Now the 12-tone system has a bad rap, but in the 50s and 60s, every composer was like a card carrying 12-tone composer,” he said. “I think some of his most inventive music was music he wrote with this 12-tone stem, which was magical and full of life.”

Both Schoenberg and Machover were heavily influenced by Bach and the cello, and audiences may recognize in “Schoenberg in Hollywood” parts of a Bach suite and choral music, as well as the influences of Jewish cantorial music, late 19th century Romantic music, as well as cartoon and movie music, and of course, 12-tone music.

“I wanted to move from different types of music in a way that it seems the most natural thing to hear something 12-tone and then electronic and then very hummable,” Machover said. “Without saying it directly, I wanted people to feel like these different kinds of music have something in common, and it’s a pleasure to embrace all these different kinds, and by doing so to see that what’s common to our humanity is more than what makes us different.”

Onstage behind the set, 16 musicians play strings, winds, brass, piano, and electronic keyboards, including one that plays a multitude of electronic sounds created by Machover. The music and sounds come through nearly 50 speakers.

“I’ve been interested in the new feelings you get by blending acoustic and electronic instruments in different ways,” said Machover, whose fusion innovations known as “hypermusic” have earned him international recognition. “We project the music in a way to makes the sound feel like it has different sizes, shapes and qualities, as though it’s a character.”

While the opera has only three singers, it has multiple characters who were part of Schoenberg’s life. Omar Ebrahim, an English baritone and actor, is Schoenberg, and BLO Emerging Artist alumni Sara Womble and Jesse Darden, BLO’s principle artist-in-resident, play the roles of Girl and Boy, who are Schoenberg’s students, as well as Thalberg, Groucho Marx, the composer’s wives and other characters. At times, the performers walk into and out of the movie, morphing between what is real and what is part of the filmmaking. The set resembles a Hollywood sound stage, with changing configurations of panels and screens and projections from the front and behind that look like a movie screening.

Nelson said she is committed to commissioning new operas and to give opportunities to contemporary composers.

“When you commission an opera, you never know what’s going to come out in the end, and that is a risk worth taking,” Nelson said. “Tod dares to break through the traditional norms and forms of opera. He is a visionary artist who uses contemporary technology to push boundaries and create a new sound element.”

Reach Jody Feinberg at jfeinberg@patriotledger.com. Follow her on Twitter@JodyF_Ledger.